User:MB/NPP sandbox3

Proposal for moving articles to Draft

In every discussion about AFD/Notability/Verifiability/Draftification, there are always the same two primary objections to greater use of Draftify:

1. it is effectively deletion by one editor without any discussion (backdoor deletion) as drafts are automatically deleted if left untouched for six months.

2. the best way to cause an article to be improved is for it to be in mainspace where it is much more "visible". Draftify harms the encyclopedia because articles moved there are less likely to be improved.

Backdoor Deletion

Drafts that are not edited in six months can be deleted via WP:G13. Why is this? User space is filled with thousands (tens, hundreds of thousands) of abandoned drafts. They are deemed harmless and unworthy of even deleting, as stated in the guideline WP:STALEDRAFT. This is further discussed in the essay Wikipedia:Ragpicking which says Much of what is in draft space and in user space is trash, but there is no need to take action to trash it. It acknowledges that abandoned drafts in Draftspace will be deleted by G13 while implying that is unnecessary as all drafts are harmless, as inconsequential as "water droplets in an ocean". Even nominating abandoned User space drafts is considered disruptive to WP:MFD.

Given the complete rejection of deleting User space drafts, why is at the same time apparently considered a problem to let Draftspace get too full? Why is draftspace so special? What is the history behind this? Why don't we change it. A draft just sitting in draftspace is doing no harm. Why is there so much opposition to moving articles that need work to Draftspace and simultaneously so much objection to letting drafts linger? Why don't we do something about this to mute the "backdoor deletion" argument?

There is already {{Promising draft}} and {{AfC postpone G13}}, although per this RFC, these can't be used to protect a draft from deletion permanently.

All we need is a policy change requiring that NPP tag a Draftified article with {{Promising draft NPP}} or something similar that would prevent automatic deletion indefinitely. Since there are over 138,000 articles in Category:All articles lacking sources that can stay in mainspace indefinitely unless taken to AFD, I don't see why these drafts can't stay indefinitely. If there is too much objection to a permanent exemption, some alternative can be considered.

Drafts are hidden and unlikely to be improved

Why don't we just change that too. If you try to create a page in mainspace when there is a draft, you get the following page notice message:

Why don't we leave a similar message behind when we Draftify in place of the article.

This would mean we would have bluelinks instead of redlinks to these "topics" from other mainspace articles, but so what. It takes the reader to a notice that the subject has potential and invites them to improve it. A lot of these drafts are in better shape than a lot of our old unreferenced stubby articles, so why completely hide them. And the anti-draftify people say these should be in mainspace anyway (since we don't AFD/CSD them).

I'm not sure if the link would be considered a link from Mainspace to Draftspace. It's really a link from a "page notice"/pseudo article. If having a link gives too much external visibility to these drafts, we wouldn't really have to have a link; we could just say "There is an article by this name in Draft space, go to the search bar and type Draft:article name."

Leaving this "article" behind would also prevent the draft from being moved back to mainspace cause the "article" is in the way. Some of us might think that is a good thing. It would force the article to get moved by someone the necessary permissions, or having to WP:RM or at least a G6 speedy deletion of the "article" as holding up a page move. Not sure if that would gain consensus.